Like its much-discussed cousin, marijuana, hemp is emerging from the shadows of illegality and being celebrated this weekend at the inaugural Hemp Meeting Boulder County 2014.

The event, which takes place at 11 a.m. Saturday at Boulder Public Library's George Reynolds Branch, will feature hemp farmers, hemp vendors, hemp displays and a visit from Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett, who last year served on the rule-drafting Industrial Hemp Regulatory Committee.

"There will be free hemp samples -- hemp coffee, hemp ice cream," said Veronica Carpio, the Erie woman who helped put together the meeting. "There will be hemp seeds and hemp plants for sale for the first time. There will be a lot of hands-on hemp there."

Carpio, a cannabis entrepreneur who owns Colorado Hemp Coffee, said the goal is to create a "hemp dynasty" in Boulder County, with farmers, seed collectors and hemp processing centers breathing new life into a once widely used crop that was banned during the federal marijuana crackdown early last century. Carpio, herself, ran afoul of drug laws a few years ago when the former Lafayette medical marijuana dispensary owner pleaded guilty to possessing more than 12 ounces of the drug after authorities accused her of selling pot to be taken out of state.

Hemp, the non-drug variant of the marijuana plant that can be used in products ranging from paper to shampoo to paint, was legalized in Colorado in 2012 when voters passed Amendment 64. The landmark ballot measure permits marijuana use and possession by adults and allows for the cultivation of hemp.

Carpio said the focus right now is on building up a robust seed bank for hemp plants -- one that will yield plants that do well in Colorado's climate. That hasn't been easy during the years when the plant was an illicit crop, she said.

"The seed is the key and the seed has not been able to be acquired anywhere inside the country," Carpio said. "There are people in Boulder County working as hard as they can trying to get seed production ready for March."

March 1 is when the Colorado Department of Agriculture opens its registration process for farmers wanting to grow industrial hemp or plant research and development plots. The cost to register for industrial hemp farmers is $200 plus $1 an acre while the cost for R&D operations is $100 plus $5 an acre. The registration period ends May 1.

Ryan Loflin, a hemp farmer who owns 60 acres south of Lamar, will be speaking at Hemp Meeting Boulder County on Saturday. He said he was generally happy with the hemp rules passed by the state late last year, though he said the threshold of 0.3 percent THC content for hemp plants could make development of a hardy strain more difficult. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the chief psychoactive ingredient in pot plants.

For example, Loflin said some seed strains from China grow nicely here but contain illegal levels of THC.

"Finding the right cultivars for our climate in Colorado is going to be key to the equation," he said. "Seed development is going to be really important for the next few years."

Loflin said he and other farmers also worry about the lack of banking services afforded those in the cannabis business, the result of banks not wanting to run afoul of federal law by handling money derived from a product still classified as a controlled substance at the national level. Hand in hand with that is the prospect of farmers losing their lines of credit from their financial institutions.

"In winter, farmers basically live on that line of credit and feed their families on that line of credit," Loflin said.

Ron Carleton, deputy commissioner of the Colorado Department of Agriculture, acknowledged that the THC limit set out in the state rules will make it more challenging to develop the optimum hemp plant for Colorado. But he said there isn't much his agency can do about it given the fact that the threshold was included the very language of Amendment 64 and is now part of the Colorado Constitution.

But he said he is certain that Colorado hemp farmers will eventually amass a seed bank that works well and is confident the industry will thrive here.

"I have no doubt we'll get from here to there but it may be bumpy at the beginning," Carleton said. "Being the first to do this, it gives us a leg up on other states, which will surely follow in the next few years. We get to start at the ground floor."

Loflin agrees that with hemp's multiple uses and applications, "the sky's the limit."

"You can make anything but glass out of hemp," he said. "Hemp is literally going to save rural America."

Carpio goes a step further. She predicts that hemp could one day eclipse the economic power of recreational marijuana, which in just the first week of legal retail sales in Colorado brought in an estimated $5 million.

"We're laying a new foundation for a new industry and hemp is potentially larger than marijuana," she said.

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